Case 17 Nineteenth Century New Orleans saw an explosion
of short-lived newspapers. There were 139 newspapers published at least
partly in French in Louisiana between 1790 and 1910. Among the papers
that enjoyed some degree of success were, Le Moniteur de la Louisiane,
the first newspaper ever published in Louisiana in 1794; the anti-slavery
La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orléans that was created during
the Civil War in 1864 and Le Carillon which introduced itself
in 1869 as being "hardly political, even less literary and not
serious at all, but soon became famous both for its irreverence
and its vocal conservatism. Many New Orleans newspapers were founded
by the Foreign French, refugees and intellectuals from the
political turmoil of France. The New Orleans Francophone press took
up the issues that had animated their political debates at home, and
the citys journalists became known for their work with their swords
as well as with their pens. The history of French-speaking journalism
in the city is indeed punctuated with famous duels. Founded in 1827,
ns L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléa( The New Orleans Bee)
was about to celebrate its one-hundredth birthday when it released its
last issue in 1925. First printed exclusively in French, L'Abeille
soon began to include an English section in its columns, but this was
abandoned in 1872 because of increased competition from the English-language
newspapers. Between 1829 and 1830, L'Abeille also published a
section in Spanish, La Abeja. First published three times a week,
the paper quickly became a daily. Beside its columns devoted to the
news, both local and from Europe-- particularly from France-- L'Abeille
followed the lead of a number of papers in the 1840s by embracing
a journalism of ideas centered upon the artistic and literary life of
the city. Thus one could find in L'Abeille detailed information
about musical and theatrical performances in New Orleans. For many years
Louis Placide Canonge was in charge of the music and theater reviews.
One could also read in L'Abeille the poems composed by the white
Creole elite like Léona Queyrouze. But after the Civil War, the
French language faced dramatic declines in New Orleans, gradually eliminating
the readership for the French- language press. This decline accounted
for the creation of L'Athénée louisianais in 1875
by a small group of well-known Creoles including General Pierre Soulé
and General G.T. Beauregard . In the official declaration that established
the goals of the organization, the members of L'Athénée
louisianais pledged to defend and encourage the use of the French
language in Louisiana . The group published a periodical entitled Les
Comptes-rendus de l'Athénée louisianais (The Records of
l'Athénée louisianais) , the quality and intelligence
of which were praised by the English-speaking writer Lafcadio Hearn.
Alfred Mercier, Charles Gayarré and Léona Queyrouze were
among the most regular contributors to L'Athénée.
Octave Huard's essay entitled De l'utilité de la langue
française aux États-Unis" ("On the Usefulness
of the French Language in Louisiana"), reveals the importance this
organization placed on the desperate defense of their language and culture
which already seemed to be a holdover from a bygone era. It is in this
defensive mood that Alfred Mercier concludes an article published by
Les Comptes-rendus de l'Athénée louisianais in November
1880: See: Edward Larocque Tinker. Bibliography of the French Newspapers and Periodicals of Louisiana. (Worchester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1933). |
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Case 18 Before the Civil War, the large population of
Free People of Color in Creole New Orleans developed a tradition of
protest against the injustice they faced. Creoles of Color took up the
romantic ideals and republican politics that had long been growing in
the city in such institutions as Armand Lanusses literary society
and the spiritualist religious movement. In the decade before the war,
Joseph Barthet, a French emigre to New Orleans, published the newspaper
Le Spiritualiste in which the communications between spirits of
the dead and New Orleans mediums were printed. The messages revealed
by these mediums, some of whom like Constant Reynes were Creoles of
Color, were critical of the conservative catholic clergy of New Orleans
and endorsed abolitionist publications. The fall of New Orleans to the
Union army in April1862 was quickly followed by the appearance in September
of that year of LUnion , a French-language newspaper owned
and edited by free people of color. LUnion and its editor
Paul Trevigne took up the cause of the Republican abolitionists and
argued for the liberty and equality of the black south. In the issue
of LUnion displayed here, the funeral of André Caillou
is described in detail. Caillou, a prominent Creole of Color and a hero
of the Battle of Port Hudson, had been an officer in the Native
Guards, a military unit made up of free men of color. Caillous
body was accompanied to the cemetery by a grand parade of admirers and
representatives of the many benevolent societies and brotherhoods of
free-black New-Orleans. Shortly after LUnion folded in
July 1864, Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez a Paris-trained doctor and prominent
Creole of color, launched the bilingual paper La Tribune de la Nouvelle
Orleans, the first daily newspaper published by African-Americans
in the United States. top See: Caryn Cossé Bell. Revolution Romanticism and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in New Orleans, 1718-1868. (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1997). |
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Case 19 The rise and fall of French Opera in New Orleans
frames the Nineteenth Century, from the first recorded performance of
opera in the city in 1796 to the tragic burning of the French Opera
House in 1919. In the early part of the century the New Orleans opera
houses imported talented European musicians and singers and presented
some of the finest opera in the United States. In 1796 Grétrys
Silvain was performed at the St. Peter Street Theater, the
first recorded performance of opera in New Orleans. During the 1805-06
season the St. Peter Street Theater presented twenty-three performances
of at least sixteen different operas to a city with a population of
only twelve thousand people. Soon other companies were brought to the
city and a rivalry developed between John Davis, a French-born refugee
from St. Domingue who operated the Orleans Theater, and James Caldwell,
an American who oversaw the Camp Street Theater. Competition between
these theaters mirrored the tensions that existed between the Anglophone
and Francophone sections of the city. Each group prided itself on the
accomplishments of its opera troupe and boasted of the superiority of
their artists. Giacomo Meyerbeers Robert le Diable,
a perineal favorite, first premiered in New Orleans in 1835 at Caldwells
Camp Street Theater, then opened six weeks later at Daviss Orleans
Street Theater. Critics from the French and English language press each
claimed that their companys performance of Robert Le Diable
was far superior to the others. From 1827 to 1833 Davis traveled
with a troupe of fifty performers to cities on the East Coast of the
United States during the summer off-season in New Orleans. Le
Pré Aux Clercs by Ferdinand Hérold was performed
in New York by this Compagnie Française de la Nouvelle
Orleans. Thus Creole New Orleans was, in this respect, an exporter
of French culture to the rest of the United States. top See: Henry A. Kmen. Music in New Orleans: The Formative Years, 1791-1841. (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1966). |
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Case 20 While the Civil War interrupted the New Orleans
Opera for several seasons, the New Orleans public soon enjoyed a grand
new home for Opera. Designed by the great New Orleans architect James
Gallier Jr., and built in 1859, the French Opera House was the home
to opera for the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Traveling Italian
and German companies were first to perform for the theater-starved public
after the war. It was not until the 1867-68 season that a resident company
was assembled in Europe and brought to New Orleans to perform at the
French Opera House. But various managerial and financial problems plagued
the company at the French Opera house, forcing the cancellation of the
1872-73 season. In 1873 Louis Placide Canonge, the New Orleans journalist
and playwright, took control of the troubled French Opera House and
directed the troop there for two years until he was forced out by a
group of disgruntled musicians. After a four year absence, the French
Opera House opened again for the 1878-79 season and presented the New
Orleans premier of Bizets Carmen . In the last two
decades of the century the French Opera House stabilized under the direction
of Frédéric Mauge, and visits by such operatic luminaries
as Adelina Patti in 1881 and 1885, and Sarah Bernhardt in 1892 were
highlights of the opera season. In 1892 Léona Queyrouze published
a poem dedicated to Bernhardt, "Le Sonnet Impromptu" , that
praises the world-famous singer. The French Opera in New Orleans gradually
declined during the first decades of the Twentieth Century. After a
six-year period in which no resident company occupied the French Opera
House, there was again in 1919 a French Company presenting grand opera
in the city. Six weeks into the season, on December 4, 1919, the French
Opera House burned to the ground. top See: Lewis Joseph Richard Jr. The Development of Opera in New Orleans from the Civil War to the Burning of the French Opera House in 1919. (Unpublished Thesis, LSU, 1959). |
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Case 17 L'Abeille
et L'Athénée louisianais |
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